It is Just a Phase?

Image from Claudia Love on UnSplash.

Have you ever been accused of just going through a phase?

Drawing from several comments from other transgender women and trans men, including myself, I have heard us being accused of just going through a phase when it comes to being transgender.

There was a time in my life when I seriously hoped I was just going through a phase when it came to my love of dressing in feminine clothing and makeup. I wanted it to be just an innocent hobby I could put down and walk away from at any time. As years went by, I found I couldn’t replace my so-called hobby with anything else in my life. I did the worse possible thing, I tried to internalize my feelings hoping I could somehow ignore them, and the phase would go away. Of course, it never did.

I always thought my mom knew I was trying on her clothes and putting on her makeup but never said anything because she thought I was going through a phase. Obviously, she was wrong! She never had the courage to call me out on what I was doing until I brought it up to her in a very ill-fated attempt to come out when I was discharged from the Army many years later. She quickly rejected my attempt to clear the air by volunteering psychiatric care. Of course, I refused her offer because I knew I was not mentally ill. I just wanted to live a transfeminine life on my terms. We never mentioned it again for the rest of her life but at least I tried to explain my deepest secret to her.

The phase idea came to be one idea I always ran from. I did not feel deep down my feelings were a phase but still was afraid to face the truth. I ended up moving many times and trying many new jobs just to try to outrun my gender feelings. It all was exhausting to my already fragile mental health. In fact, my initial gender therapist diagnosed me as being bi-polar when all along I thought I was just terribly depressed when I never thought I could achieve my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman. I was depressed when I considered the extreme distance I still had to travel, just not as bad.

As I still managed to progress along my gender pathway, I still encountered phases I needed to go through. The major one was what I called my teen girl dressing years. As I survived my urge to stuff my oversize male body into skimpy fashions, I was quickly laughed back into my closet several times before I learned the proper way to attempt to blend in with what other women my age were wearing. Easily, it was the most difficult phase I needed to deal with. Mainly because I was so stubborn.

It turned out the stubbornness I possessed was just what I needed to keep going. Deep down I knew I was in the middle of one of the most complex journeys a human can take, and I could be successful if I tried hard enough. It all meant I needed to earn my way through the feminine gatekeepers I faced to be allowed to play in their sandbox.  I was petrified when I needed to actually begin to talk one on one with other women. Very early on, I was frightened of their reaction when they learned I was not a cis-gendered woman. This was before I learned my path to womanhood was as valid as theirs. I just came to mine along a different path. Amazingly to me, the doors were opened to me, and I was permitted to play behind the gender curtain.

It was around this time when I began one of the most powerful phases of my life, when I made the correct decision to begin gender affirming hormones, or HRT. I say powerful because the new hormones I was prescribed by a doctor turned out to be everything I dreamed of and more. If anything, else, the hormones proved my whole life was not a phase. Now I felt as if I was arriving home in the deepest sense. If you compared my hormonal life as a circle, I was completing mine. The effects of HRT made me feel whole as a transfeminine woman. I could feel deeper, be more emotional and enjoy the world as never before.

I proved, more than ever before, my life was not a phase, I was much more than just a man putting on a dress. I proved all along I was a woman putting on a male face and clothes all along. At the least, I could rest easily knowing what my gender issue was all along. Not a phase but my life.

 

 

Much More than a Phase

 

Civil War Cemetery image
from the Jessie Hart Archives. 

When I was first experimenting with wearing woman's clothing, I worked long and hard to hide all my feminine wardrobe and makeup. 

Due to transportation and financial constraints I always had a difficult time adding to my very limited collection. Plus, I always wondered if my Mom ever really discovered her clothes and others I managed to "borrow" for my cross dressing trips to my mirror. If she did, she never confronted me about it. Perhaps she thought it all was a phase and I would grow out of it. Similar to the fallacy, being transgender is ever a choice, I learned my gender issues were much more than a phase.

Very early on, I discovered a lesson I should have relied on but kept on ignoring. The lesson was, I wanted to be a girl, not just look like one. The very beginning of the realization I was transgender as I envied everything girls around me did.  Which went far past their pretty clothes while I was stuck in my drab male clothes. All along I was stuck in a family which valued male superiority and I wanted to rebel but couldn't. I often wonder if I had been born into a more diverse family (if that was possible back in those days) I could have made my feelings known and thrived. Instead, I did the only male thing I knew how to do and internalized all my inner feelings. I even thought, if I ignored my gender issues long enough, they would turn out to be a phase and go away.

Of course my gender dysphoria never did go away and just grew worse as I began to understand the full depth of what I was facing. As I look back, Halloween parties were my first indication I could do more than living a shallow life in front of the mirror as a cross dresser. I learned the hard way, heels weren't so much fun when I first wore them on long walks all the way to how much fun I had experimenting with the clothes and learning from the parties as a whole. Another step towards showing me my phase was not going away, I was just growing into it.

Halloween parties proved to be false feedback in many ways. Most people who saw me were friends who thought Haha I was the clown dressing as a woman for a laugh. Even though I was going as far as shaving my legs. In my mind, my legs alone would do the trick and everyone would know I was much more than a once a year man putting on a dress. At least I wanted it to as I grew confident I could present more and more as a real woman at the party. When I had achieved my goal, I felt I was ready to pursue a future as a successful transgender woman. 

When I did, the work really started. Life was so much more challenging as I left my male phase in my past. I wonder now if my Mom ever thought my simple love of girls clothes was a phase, what would she think now. Outside of the one time I tried to come out to her as a transvestite and she rejected me, we never discussed it again before her death. I can't help but look back and regret how much life I may have lost if she would have ever accepted me. I on the other hand took the high road and honored her by using her first name as my new legal middle name.  

Normally, phases come and go but certainly none of it applies to being a cross dresser or transgender person. Once the public at large learns to accept we are not a phase, trans kids especially could benefit from more understanding when they are young. Parents and siblings could have a more serious outlook of what being trans is all about, helping the whole situation. Or, leave the phase out and help the person.